Infant walkers remain a "preventable source of injury" for young kids, enough that researchers believe they should be banned in the U.S., says authors of a new study.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, found between 1990 and 2014, more than 230,000 children under the age of 15 months were treated in the emergency room for injuries in the U.S. linked to walkers, an average of more than 9,000 a year.

"I think it speaks to the issue that as a parent, when you go into a store, especially a baby store and make a purchase, I think you have a reasonable expectation that something you purchase is safe," said Dr. Elizabeth Murray, pediatric emergency physician at UR Medicine's Golisano Children's Hospital. "That is not the case with these walkers."

She compared the walkers to crib bumpers, which the American Academy of Pediatrics is against.

Murray was not involved in the current study.

The majority of injuries with walkers involved children between the ages of 7 and 10 months.

UR Medicine's Golisano Children's Hospital does not keep data specifically on injuries from this device, said Murray, but she recalled two incidents in the past year involving Rochester-area children.

"The thing that is very consistent is the parent saying, 'We just didn't expect the child to be able to move so far,'" Murray said. "They knew there was a risk of the child going downstairs. They never anticipated the speed with which the child was going to go from room to room."

More than 90 percent of incidents involved head and neck injuries, while 74 percent were injured falling down the stairs while using an infant walker, according to the study. Murray said that in a fall in a walker, the child's head and neck are unprotected and could sustain serious injury.

The number of injuries annually fell nearly 23 percent during a four-year period after the Consumer Product Safety Commission established a federal mandatory safety standard on infant walkers in 2010, said the study.

Researchers involved in the study as well as the American Academy of Pediatrics, which publishes the journal Pediatrics, have called for a ban on the walkers in the U.S.

"Despite the decline in injuries, infant walkers remain an important and preventable source of injury among young children," reads an excerpt from the study.

Murray described the walkers as seats that have wheels so the child can bounce and move along. A stationary seat would not pose the same danger, she said.

Murray said parents believe the apparatus hastens the child's ability to walk. However, she said, there's no evidence that they promote motor development, and may rush things.

"We know toddlers do not make a lot of good decisions," she said.

"The child is now mobile when developmentally they are not supposed to be mobile," she said. The walkers make them mobile "in a way that their reach is higher than it normally would be. A 10-month-old might be crawling, but they're way down low on the ground. Now you have a 10-month-old who is upright that can reach up to a table and pull things down and perhaps they wouldn't normally be able to. Their range has greatly increased."